In the same year and featuring only one original wood engraving – although of some significance – came the Caxton Club’s: Fantasy in a Wood Block or What Occurred When John James Audubon, the Naturalist, Visited with Thomas Bewick, the Wood Engraver, in the Year 1827. Published: Chicago 1972, 500 copies for club members. The book describes the events surrounding the first meeting between Bewick and Audubon, and identifies the actual wood block Bewick was engraving at the time. Quoting from Audubon's Ornithological Biography and edited journals, the book goes on to say:
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‘Newcastle-upon-Tyne, April 13 [1827]...Having shown me the work he was at, a small vignette cut on a block of box-wood not more than three by two inches, representing a dog frightened during the night by false appearances of rocks, &c. This curious piece of art, like all his works, was exquisite’. |
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Remarkably, the curious quarter inch high pair of ‘gallows blocks’ – a favourite image frequently used by Bewick to show disapproval and placed within the text of the Water Birds 1804, as well as every variant printing up to and including the Memorial Edition – survived the Trans-Atlantic journey. |
Ben Abramson had the gallows priced up at $25 the pair. It is quite possible, according to Mrs Covington; they went to Norman Forgue publisher of miniature books under the Black Cat Press imprint. If this was so, they are not part of the fifteen blocks used in: Vignettes From Birds, Quadrupeds and Fables Memorial Edition. The Black Cat Press, Chicago, Illinois [March 1971, 200 copies]. ‘R. Hunter Middleton printed the Vignettes by hand...Type set and printed by Norman Forgue at his press. The original blocks used for this book were sold by lottery to subscribers, one block limit’. 7
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Around 1968 Letterio Calapai – artist and Intaglio printmaker of international note – got to know Middleton and also David Sander; owner, with his brother, of the Sander Engraving Company. Middleton and Sander agreed the loan of twenty-eight blocks, together with two from the University of Chicago, comprised those used in: A Portfolio of Wood Engravings, Aesop’s Fables...Printed from the original blocks by Letterio Calapai... [Glencoe Illinois, 1971 – 73] 1974. The enterprise was a great success. Of the one hundred signed copies, two thirds were sold pre publication at $85. The rest went at $125 after 1 May 1974.8 |
Calapai's Fables Portfolio with ephemera concerning its publication. |
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According to the records: After the death of Ben Abramson in 1955 the Argus Bookshop was closed down. Following which, and in some haste, the majority of the remaining woodblocks were sold to the Sander Engraving Co. Amounting to around 500 in number; the two Sanders brothers paid $1,000. Eight years later, says Mrs Covington, Sanders offered her 200 blocks back for $12,000 – she declined.9 |
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